"Chicken With Plums" - Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud (2012)

"Chicken With Plums" is Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's follow-up to their 2007 animated masterpiece, "Persepolis."

The film tells the story of Nasser-Ali, a man whose violin breaks.  He can't find a suitable replacement, so he decides it's time to die.

This may not sound like the premise for a magical film full of wonder, but it is.

Toward the beginning of the film, we're treated to a montage of Nasser-Ali fantasizing about all the possible ways he could kill himself.

Each method is distasteful, so he crawls into bed to wait for death.

And that's where the adventure begins.

 

As Nasser-Ali lies in bed, willing himself to die, he reflects on his life.  The film is primarily a series of flashbacks showing how he came to this sorry state.

We see how he became a gifted musician and why he married a woman he never loved.

More importantly, we see the true reason for his death wish.

Too many art films focus on gorgeous visuals at the expense of its theme and characters.

"Chicken With Plums" is not one of them.  There is plenty beneath the surface.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chobsky (2012)

There's never been a shortage of coming of age films.  It's a genre all to itself.

But "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" sets itself apart, not just because it's one of the best ever made, but because of its sincerity.
 
 
Charlie is a freshman in high school who doesn't have a friend to his name until he meets Patrick and Sam, a pair of outsider seniors.

Charlie inevitably develops feelings for Sam, but it's more than a high school crush.  Their relationship develops slowly and it's treated delicately, with the respect it deserves.  The two of them open up to each other over the course of the film with trust and in good faith.
Charlie, Patrick and Sam are all damaged goods, and that's why they fit together so well.  Traditionally, in films like this, the focus is on how much kids like this need to be accepted.  What makes "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" so special is these characters aren't just ready to receive love, they're capable of giving it as well.

 
The film works so well because while it focuses on teen angst, it demonstrates, without any cynicism, how it's not just a source of pain, but a force that drives these kids.

Mostly, it shows how the people who love you can make you brave.  Admittedly, that sounds cheesy as hell, but when you're watching this film, it feels like a lovely sentiment.

But I think what I love most about "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is the way it truly understands broken people.  If someone is sad, they genuinely don't have the capacity to feel better.  And "Perks" accepts people like that on their face without trying to change them.

In 'Lawless,' Nick Cave crafts a new murder ballad

CANNES, France (AP) -- Writing the Prohibition-era bootlegger crime film "Lawless" -- his second realized script and largest movie production yet -- taught Australian songwriter Nick Cave certain foundational lessons of Hollywood moviemaking.

   "I learned that it's a waste of time to graphically kill animals in scripts," Cave says, laughing. "It's going to hit the cutting room floor."

   The education and development of Nick Cave, screenwriter, continues with "Lawless," a tale of three bootlegging brothers (Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke) in rural 1920s Virginia. In adapting Matt Bondurant's novel, Cave was predictably moved to include scenes from the book of a pig's slaughter and a dead calf's birth, but had to settle for gangster gunplay and an ominous atmosphere alive with the constant threat of sudden brutality.

   The film marks Cave's continuing dalliance with screenwriting, "an extracurricular" activity, he calls it, along with novel and poetry writing. That's in addition to his "No. 1 job" as a musician and frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the currently dormant Grinderman.

   "I became a script writer with absolutely no idea of how to write a script whatsoever," says Cave, who also wrote the 2005 Australian outback Western, "The Proposition." "I still feel a bit of an outsider in that regard. If I can maintain that approach to screenwriting, it can continue to be enjoyable. But as soon as that's gone and I understand the process, I don't think I'll have much interest in writing scripts at all."

   Violence has been a rich vein for Cave since he emerged in the 1980s with the London-based punk outfit The Birthday Party. As a theatrical lyricist of spare fables, his gothic songs of death and mean men with a "red right hand" have often carried a murderous gravity and narrative bent.

   Like the bloody "Proposition," "Lawless" is another kind of murder ballad for Cave, one populated with colorful characters compelled by primal urges.

   "I don't know where that comes from except that it's a particular talent I have to write about that stuff," says Cave, a native of rural Victoria who now lives in Brighton, England, with his wife and twin sons. "Whether that's from being a country boy walking around the ranges with a shotgun as a child and all that sort of stuff, but that was very much what my childhood was like."

   Cave spoke in an interview first in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Lawless" competed for the Palm d'Or, and again by phone from Los Angeles, where he's recently recorded a new album with the Bad Seeds.

   Erudite and droll, Cave, the son of an English teacher and librarian, is an engaging subject whose dry wit captivated Cannes more than the star power of the film's cast, which also includes Guy Pearce and Jessica Chastain.

   LaBeouf attached himself to the script early on and stuck with the project through delays due to financing. He remained with it because of Cave's screenplay and the prospect of working with director John Hillcoat, a friend of Cave's who also directed "The Proposition."

   "When a man says to you, `I'm planning on making "Goodfellas" in the woods,' it's really hard to get away from that idea," says LaBeouf.

   Cave says that the larger size of "Lawless," which the Weinstein Co. is releasing in theaters Friday, "opened my eyes to how film is made," referring to the necessary compromising of a project with many interested parties.

   But screenwriting remains a fascinating process for Cave, who says it comes far more natural to him than songwriting. Despite the 54-year-old's decades in music, he calls songwriting torturous.

   "Songwriting is something where I have to go into a room on my own and battle it out and squeeze out these songs," says Cave. "It's like giving birth out of the tiniest of apertures. It's painful and it's kind of bloody, whereas writing scripts, I feel like a little boy."

   When Cave writes a script, he simultaneously is considering the score. For "Lawless," he wanted to avoid the Americana route, wary of competing with T-Bone Burnett's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack. Instead, he and Bad Seeds violinist Warren Ellis went for a "raw, punky feel."

   The score is thus full of countrified versions of more recent rock songs not typically done that way, most notably bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley singing the Velvet Underground tune "White Light/White Heat." Cave believes the song, which is about methamphetamine use, connects the film's criticism of Prohibition with contemporary anti-drug policy.

   Though Cave now finds himself an in-demand screenwriter, he says it reenergizes him for his "bread and butter" occupation.

   "Screenwriting is something I use to help keep the process of songwriting alive," he says. "If that's all I was doing, I would have dried up or gone into a real decline years ago with songwriting. I'm always coming back to songwriting. In fact, I'm always running back to songwriting screaming."

"Lawless" - John Hillcoat (2012)

John Hillcoat waxes poetic about violence once again with his prohibition-era crime drama, "Lawless."

The film once again teams up Hillcoat and murder-music legend turned screenwriter Nick Cave.

The story centers around three bootlegging brothers, Jack, Forest and Howard.

Guy Pearce, who played the quietly ferocious Charlie Burns in Hillcoat's violent 2005 masterpiece, "The Proposition," shows up as Special Agent Charlie Rakes, the intensely creepy, sadistic dandy of a lawman intent on putting the Bondurants out of business.

Nick Cave's screenplay is dark with a fastidious attention to its characters.

Each character in the film carries a certain subtle menace.

Unfortunately, Shia LeBeouf and Jessica Chastain are in the cast, but Hillcoat does an admirable job of handling them and they manage to turn out relatively competent performances.

The body count isn't very high, but sparse at it is, each act of violence is sickening and brutal.

The violence in "Lawless" is glorious, as it should be.  The film is screaming and subdued at the same time, an unlikely mix that's become Hillcoat's haunting trademark.

If "The Road" and "The Proposition" weren't enough for Hillcoat to make his mark, "Lawless" goes a step further in establishing Hillcoat as one of the most important directors working today.

"Take This Waltz" Sarah Polley (2012)

Sarah Polley's "Take This Waltz" might be the most delicate film I've ever seen about the breakdown of a marriage.
  It's been 5 years since Polley's underrated "Away From Her" and this latest film cements her status as one of the most important directors working today.

The film is elegantly written and executed with a remarkable subtlety. 
 
This all sounds like high praise and it is.

The only problem is I'm pretty sure I hated this movie.

The film follows Margot, played by Michelle Williams, a happily married woman who suffers from an infatuation with her new neighbor, Daniel.

Daniel is one of those guys who thinks he's seductive but really just comes off as creepy.

Seth Rogen gives a surprisingly muted performance as Margot's clueless and then heartbroken husband, Lou.

The relationship between Margot and Lou is much more interesting than her crush on Daniel.

The couple has a touching playfulness about them, but it's hiding a lot of insecurity, pain and vulnerability.

As always, Williams gives a truly gorgeous and penetrating performance.

She more than deserves her third Oscar nod in a row. 

And Sarah Silverman plays Geraldine, Margot's sister-in-law and the film's voice of reason.
For most of the film, I wasn't sure Geraldine's character was necessary, but at the end, she ties up the point of the film nicely.

Ultimately, "Take This Waltz" is about the pitfalls of discontent.

Polley is a remarkably understated talent and I can't wait to see her next film.

However, I don't ever want to see "Take This Waltz" again.

"96 Minutes" - Aimee Lagos (2012)

"96 Minutes" is a fairly impressive feature debut by newcomer Aimee Lagos. 
 
The premise of the film is a good person who does bad things is more of a monster than a straight-up bad guy.
 

The story follows Carley and Lena, two college students and Dre and Kevin, two high-school students. The characters are frantically trying to figure out what to do after Kevin shoots Lena in the face.
 

The narrative flips back and forth between the adrenaline-filled crisis sequence and the problems of the characters' everyday lives.
 
Lena is in love with a boy who treats her like something he dug out of his ear.
 

Carley is neglected by her father and anxious about starting law school.
 
Dre is a kid working hard to graduate and escape from street life.
 

And Kevin has trouble dealing with his foul-mouthed mom and her physically abusive boyfriend. But what Kevin really wants is to be a gangsta.
 
Eventually, the two timelines merge and we see exactly what led up to the shooting.
 

The film starts slow, but somewhere in the middle of the second act, the pacing catches up and we find ourselves involved in a fairly engrossing melodrama.
 
Dre makes mistake after mistake as he tries to dig himself and his friend out of a bad situation. The scenario makes for some very nice tension.
 

Ultimately, "96 Minutes" leaves us with little hope for mankind which puts it right in line with reality.

"Ruby Sparks" - Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (2012)

The dissolution of the reality barrier has been explored before in films like "Stranger than Fiction" and Woody Allen's "Purple Rose of Cairo."

But never has the line between art and life been explored so thoroughly as it is in "Ruby Sparks."

Calvin is a writer suffering from writer's block until he finds himself romantically drawn to one of his characters.

When he finally returns to his typewriter, he does so with such fervor he brings his ideal woman to life.

Calvin acknowledges his love for Ruby even before she manifests herself.

Aside from being Calvin's dream girl, she's also sweet and vulnerable in her own right.

He has written her exactly to his liking, having her say things like "The first time I saw you, I said, 'Look at that boy.  I'm going to love him forever and ever.'"

Of course nothing good ever lasts and trouble starts when Ruby starts showing she has a will of her own.

 

Calvin can keep writing to change her for convenience's sake, but no matter how often he tweaks Ruby, she never fits his idea of perfect because how good can the product of a neurotic mind be?

At one point in the third act, we're horrified at the controlling monster Calvin has become.

The point of the film is that no abstract ideal can ever be a match for a real, autonomous human being.

Make no mistake, "Ruby Sparks" is not a romantic comedy.

 

It is, however, insightful, endearing, forgiving and easily one of the best films of 2012.

And as a side note, "Ruby Sparks" gets points for having the couple attend a screening of Peter Jackson's zombie film "Dead Alive" and including Plastic Bertrand's "C'est Plane Pour Moi" on the soundtrack.

The Flowers of War – Yimou Zhang (2012)

I can’t in good conscience recommend Yimou Zhang’s “The Flowers of War.”

The film follows John Miller, played by Christian Bale, a western mortician posing as a priest in 1937 Nanking.

We follow him as he tries to save a group of girls who are students at the convent and a group of prostitutes hiding in the church cellar.

I talked in my review of Agnieszka Holland’s “In Darkness” about poeticizing atrocities.  That’s exactly what “The Flowers of War” does.

At one point, during a brutal sequence when a character is raped and murdered, we’re given a beautiful cutaway to a spout of blood spraying from the victim’s chest.  It looks like a gorgeous fountain and I found the beauty with which it was filmed offensive.

And that’s a shame, because this film really does have a lot of things going for it.

“The Flowers of War” is gorgeously shot, but that’s a big part of the problem I had with it.  When danger comes, the music swells dramatically and we know somebody is going to die.

And the Japanese soldiers are directed terribly.  They don’t come off as menacing or maniacal, just cartoonish.

Christian Bale’s performance is more than adequate, though.  He takes his character from scoundrel to hero with complete believability.

Atsuro Watabe and Ni Ni should also get credit for subtle and nuanced performances, no easy feat in such a heavy handed film.

At any rate, if you’re looking for a film that takes a serious look at the atrocities people are capable of during war time, watch “In Darkness.”

Zhang hams it up in “The Flowers of War,” and when you’re dealing with such a delicate subject matter, it takes a steadier hand.  And "Shanghai Triad" is one of my favorite films, so imagine my disappointment.

"In Darkness" - Agnieszka Holland (2012)

Merek Edelman 1919-2009

"In Darkness" opens up with a dedication to Merek Edelman, one of the heroes of the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis.









Edelman died in October of 2009 and it's wonderful to see he's remembered.

At any rate, the film was nominated this year for Best Foreign Language Film this year.

Here's my video review of the film.

Eccleston & McGregor on "Shallow Grave"

Christopher Eccleston & Ewan McGregor talk about the look of Danny Boyle's "Shallow Grave."

"My Week With Marilyn" - Simon Curtis (2011) - A Video Review

 

Here's my review of the gorgeous "My Week With Marilyn."

"Womb" - Benedek Fliegauf (2011)

"Womb" is brilliant and revolting.

I still don't know if I liked it or not.

But hey, anything with the 11th Doctor (or Eva Green, for that matter) is worth a look.

I believe I will wait a few months and watch it again.

Here's my review.

Also, I may have mispronounced Benedek Fliegauf's name.

If I did, apologies.

"The Way" - Emilio Estevez (2011)

Here is my video review of "The Way" complete with interviews from Martin Sheen & Emilio Estevez as seen on NBC Action News.

Cracks - Jordan Scott (2011)

Yes, I know "Cracks" made its debut at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival yet my title says "2011."

I've been going by U.S. Theatrical release dates. I decided to just pick a standard for the dates I use and stick with it for consistency's sake. So for the record, when there's a disparity between my dates and imdb.com's, that's why. It occurred to me that I have never explained that.

At any rate, "Cracks" was released in New York and L.A. on March 18, so it should be making its way here to Kansas City for a short run at some point this spring.

It has gotten mediocre reviews, but I thought it was a brilliant character study of a woman unable to tell narcissism from love.


If that sounds pretentious, there's a reason why the word "Snob" is in my title.

Here's my video review.

Somewhere - Sofia Coppola (2010)

Easily one of the best films of the year.

In fact, if you check my top 10 films of the year, you'll find it.

It will be released here in Kansas City this Friday, the 18th.

Here's my review of Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere."

Winter's Bone - Debra Granik (2010)

Here's my review of the decent but radically overrated "Winter's Bone."

Animal Kingdom - David Michôd (2010) A Video Review

Here's my video review of David Michôd's "Animal Kingdom."

It's an unbelievably brilliant crime drama that deservedly won the International Grand Jury at Sundance this Spring.